Gunmen kidnap 317 schoolgirls in Nigeria
Gunmen have seized more than 300 schoolgirls in a night-time raid in northwestern Nigeria, according to police.
There's been no immediate claim of responsibility for what is the second such kidnapping in a little over a week, in a region increasingly targeted by militants and criminal gangs.
The assailants struck at around 1am on Friday (February 26), according to the information commissioner in Zamfara state, firing sporadically as they entered the Government Girls' Science Secondary School in the town of Jangebe.
The police and the army have launched search and rescue operations for the 317 missing students.
Zamfara's Police Commissioner Abutu Yaro:
''We are on the trail of the kidnappers, that is why you find us in the fringes of the forest here. It is part of our locational efforts and it is part of our cordoning efforts in order to trace the kidnappers and retrieve the students."
School kidnappings were first carried out in Nigeria by jihadist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, but the tactic has since been adopted by others in the north west whose agendas are unclear.
Abductions are now endemic around the increasingly lawless north, and Friday was the third such incident since December when 344 boys were taken from a school in Zamfara's neighboring Katsina state.
Last week unidentified gunmen kidnapped 42 people including 27 students in an overnight attack on a boarding school.
Officials speaking on a condition of anonymity say the rise in abductions is fueled in part by sizeable government payoffs in exchange for child hostages, though the government denies making such payouts.
Earlier this month President Muhammadu Buhari replaced his long-standing military chiefs amid the worsening violence.
